Customer Reviews

God: Thoughts in an Age of Uncertainty (New Century Theology)

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At last a book about God which is honest and insightful. Byrne sees through the clouds of theology clearly, and gives a really excellent critique of the traditional ideas of God. His position is agnostic, but he thinks that we are all in this position (believers and everyone else alike). The chapter on suffering (Divine Consolation?) is one of the best I've read and he also does a great job on science and religion. Byrne argues that the universe is open to religious interpretation and that we will never find one answer that suits everyone. He finishes the book with 10 theses on God that make a great summary of his ideas. There's so much bad writing on religion its great to read something as interesting as this.

`God: Thoughts In An Age of Uncertainty' (Continuum) is easily the best "God book" published in at least the past ten years, and the most "atheist-friendly" one I have had the good fortune to read. Byrne's approach is serious, scholarly and objective in the sense that he finds as much fault with the theist as with the atheist in terms of debates, discourse.

While some other books, e.g. Michael Novak's `No One Sees God' purports to practice the position of via negativa or "dark theology" (addressing what God is not, as opposed to trying to posit affirmative attributes presuming some knowledge) James Byrne's book actually succeeds. It does so because it meticulously sticks to the objective of negative knowledge unlike Novak's book which succumbs to making such statements as:

p.196:

"God must be more like human consciousness, insight, a sense of humor, good judgment..."

And:


"God knows well the creatures He made...he has to beat us around the ears a bit"

Or:

The Trinity: p. 197,

"to think of God as a Trinity is to think of Him as more like an intimate communion of persons than as a solitary being".

Or:

p. 198:

"When everything is suffused with reason, that is the presence of God"

Byrne makes no such errors because his approach is imbued with caution and the realization that human brains possess abilities to engender and create artifacts simply from the capacity for language. Nor is this in any way novel. Philosopher Joseph Campbell in his book, The Power of Myth (Anchor Books, p. 56) noted:

"'God' is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known. But the transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent, finally, of anything like the name of "God". God is beyond names and forms."


This take is analogous to that of Byrne who points out (p. 151):

"The idea of God as Being is the creation of the philosophical gaze, a result of the drive to objectification which is the hallmark of the history of metaphysics. It is the `God' which is argued about in theism and atheism, and which can only be a projection of humans"


The last few words are the most critical: "a projection of humans".

Byrne's emphasis is laid out clearly in his Introduction, in terms of both organized religion and the religious experience, and the object of such, "God". Byrne's opening remarks on page xii of the Introduction are rendered in words with which no atheist I know would disagree:

"I believe that we must take with absolute seriousness, and as the starting point for any reflection on religion, the fact that our presence on this planet is a matter of sheer contingency."

In this light, and predicated on his claim to being a "religious naturalist" (ibid.) he reasonably insists that while this contingency does not preclude religious explanations, it does not require them. Further, to cite Dietrich Bonhoeffer (p. xiii) the world does not "need God".

Byrne's basis for preparing to nonetheless sally forth 160 more pages is that despite such lack of need "the idea of God remains a powerful and real possibility for enriching our world"

Again, no atheist I know of would dispute this, since for the mass of people (as Einstein once noted) adopting the "God" idea eliminates many difficulties and complexities, especially in terms of incorporating meaning in lives!

The Chapters of Byrne's book include:

One: `God and the Self' ¬- wherein human freedom and selfhood are considered in relation to the notion of a transcendent God. Byrne's most critical point in this chapter is embodied in his adopting the more or less Buddhist position (p. 19) that when one dispenses with the trappings of some external, all-powerful and transcendent Being then one no longer needs to think along the lines of the cartoonish creature-Creator paradigm, or the "sinner and Perfect One. In other words, we can eschew the polarizing mode of thinking that caused many of us to want to overthrown the overbearing taskmaster deity in the first place!

Once one does this, one can more easily confront the relation of the self to the whole of reality (or what the physicist Bernard d'Espagnat called `Being') without the need to personalize it into a childish parody. Many of Byrne's points, indeed, could be construed on d'Espagant's assorted takes on the concept of "non-separability". E.g. if the Aspect experiments of quantum mechanics are indeed valid, we are all non-separable within the reality matrix. Hence, the very thought of isolating one part of this matrix from the rest ("God" here, "creation" there) becomes superfluous and kind of ludicrous.

Chapter Two, The Sickness Unto Death?, is one that all atheists need to carefully consider. We need to understand at root just how and to what extent the "death of God" Zeitgeist has left our culture and world more impoverished. Even for believers (who claim to be unaffected by this meme) its undercurrents are ubiquitous and powerful - and for many ordinary people - destructive. The onset of a kind of existential meaningless may be nurturing (in a perverse kind of way) to many atheists, but it is appalling for many religious people.

As one confessed to me during a debate twenty four years ago: "If I thought for one second there was nothing in the world but a purposeless cosmos and puny humans, I would go and hang myself right now! Life would no longer be worth living!"

I believe at root many of the conflicts between believers and unbelievers can be traced to this lack of sympathy form the latter. I have even been guilty of this myself at times. Byrne makes a cogent point in this chapter that all of us ask the question that Soren Kierkegaard once did: "What could it mean to be a Self if there is no God?"

What are our obligations to each other? What morality or ethics abides if God is rendered redundant ? If the cosmos is purposeless, then exactly how are the mass of humans to find meaning in their lives?

This chapter forces us to confront such questions. I'm certain the failure to do so will continue to engender more books like Michael Novak's ('No One Sees God')which tend to take us (atheists) to
task for appearing insincere, shallow or impertinent, or not truly invested in rationality or reason. (Not that I agree with any of Novak's points as I made clear in comments I made to do with reviews of his book)

Chapter Three: On Not Knowing God, is the most important by which to appreciate the true tradition of negative theology and why Michael Novak's approach is not genuinely predicated upon it. In other words, it comprises an excellent antidote to Novak's book for anyone that has been convinced he has the answers. As Byrne aptly observes (p. 60):
ALL efforts to grasp God through language must end in failure.

Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts once put it this way: If anyone must approach God, use reversed effort. As Watts expresses "reversed effort" it in his book, `The Wisdom of Insecurity':

"What religion calls the `vision of God' is found by giving up any belief in the idea of God. By a law of reversed effort, we discover the infinite and absolute not by straining to escape the finite and relative world, but by the most complete acceptance of its limitations.


Chapter Four: Facing the Wrath of God is important because it brings Christian (and to an extent, Jewish) believers face to face with the ornery, anthropomorphic caricature many of them worship. The classical biblical reference as Byrne notes, is in Genesis:6:6, wherein this petulant deity gets angry and even regrets creating humans. Can such an entity be real? Of course not! It's an anthropomorphized projection emanating from the vicious and primitive brain cells of the scribes (or whoever) that wrote it!

Thus, using biblical and other examples, does Byrne brilliantly lay bare the destructive elements in many of the concepts of God which pervade ancient scriptures. The torturing psychotic monster who had his way with Job is another case. Anyone who takes this seriously as a reflection of an actual divine entity is definitely in need of some therapy or "clearing" of neural networks or synapses. As Byrne puts it, the
lesson of the Book of Job is NOT about the suffering of the innocent (as Michael Novak and others try to portray it) but rather the nature of an anthropomorphic God.

Toward the end of the chapter, Byrne shows how believers might purge such infantile conceptions from their mind to at least gain more insight and arrive at a more sober approach to Being.

Chapter Five, `Divine Consolation' addresses the thorny issue of how, absent a God to believe in, one may still find solace in the midst of pain and suffering. In a way, this chapter provides prescriptions that were clearly called for in Chapter Two. In a world or universe without God, how might we get along? How might we see our impending
deaths, and especially deal with suffering en route? Byrne shows that "God" can be both a solace and irrelevance.

Chapter Six, `God, History and Contingency' is the most potent antidote I can think of to overbearing books such as Roland Stark's `Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief'. Indeed, it is most apropos in demolishing Stark's entire premise since it utterly extirpates the notion that contingent historical events
(whatever they were) confers some privileged religious revelation on a specific faith, e.g. Christianity.

It also dispenses with the nonsense that physically more "advanced" societies are spiritually superior to more primitive ones. Or that the accumulation of wealth and material goods is any kind of proxy indicator that one's civilization has chosen the "right God".

Chapter Seven, `God and the Cosmos' is superb in terms of how it seriously (as opposed to sophomorically, in many books) deals with the physics and astronomy of the cosmos and how they might be reconciled with a compelling idea of God. For example, Byrne brings up the religionists' favorite scientific ruse, "the anthropic principle", which they predictably trot out to try to prove design, or the influence of some
"designer".But to his credit, he provides one of the most devastating critiques of this principle using a quote from Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg himself (p. 125).

He also provides source citations to obtain detailed refutations.

Despite this, Byrne makes it clear (p. 135) that "the physical universe offers us no incontestable answers, whether we opt for theism, deism, agnosticism or atheism". My main complaint here is that I would just add the proviso "yet" - e.g. "offers us no incontestable answers YET". But I suspect at some point, our detailed observations and data (say forthcoming from the LHAC machine) will.

Byrne's final chapter, Eight- `Beyond the Idol' is also my favorite, because he again cautions believers especially to tread carefully and not get too impetuous in promoting any positively-worded "God" idea. Byrne's advice is simple and to the point (p. 156)

" In the end, as the history of negative theology so aptly demonstrates, the greatest wisdom in relation to God is to remain silent. We have to learn, therefore, how NOT to talk about God"

The essence of Byrne's POV in this chapter is that investing too much in talking or writing positively about "God" or assigning too many attributes (if even indirect ones) is tantamount to a gross form of symbolic idolatry. Byrne's emphasis on this point is so strong that (earlier) he goes so far as to endorse French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion's ploy of only writing 'God' with a strikethrough. Thereby to indicate *no one* has the capacity to describe, grasp, conceptualize or manipulate the underlying entity. In effect, as Byrne observes, "to think -G-O-D- is unthinkable is to reject the entire basis of onto-theology."

If then the entity is so de-conceptualized it can't be debated. Note, this is a different thing from being "beyond knowledge" as the agnostic would define it. It is rather, beyond any capacity for human thought at all! Thus, while the agnostic can insist his position is one of "impossibility of knowledge" of God (or supernatural) this new category prohibits even writing anything.

It is more productive and practical, as Byrne avers, to regard "God" (if one must invoke the noun at all) as a "regulative ideal". Such an ideal for human use does not preclude a transcendent Being, but does not
*require* it either.

It is no problem for me to award this excellent book five stars, because as one reads it one will see that James Byrne earned every one of them. If readers want one "God book" to read, this one qualifies hands down, based on most objective criteria that can be enlisted.